


All My Love (Has Bruised My Grieving Bones)

by strayphoenix



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 16:14:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15440838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strayphoenix/pseuds/strayphoenix
Summary: The quality is horrific. After a hundred years, the black and white nitrate film is spotty, and the flickering images stutter from partial decomposition. It’s barely enough to make out the white of the ice and snow, the vertical stripes of a winter forest, and the slender figure skating to his position in the middle of a frozen lake. Mesmerized, Yuuri leans closer.In the silence, the figure raises his head in supplication, raises a hand to drape across his face. Victor Nikiforov begins to skate, and Yuuri cannot remember how to breathe.





	All My Love (Has Bruised My Grieving Bones)

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I'd try my hand at a supernatural elements AU with a bit of a twist.

It surprises no one when Yuuri crashes and burns during the Sochi Grand Prix Final. Everyone knows he's a mediocre skater, prone to panic attacks and fits of nerves so bad you can see the tremors his skates carve into the ice. The only person in the world who expected Yuuri Katsuki to be better was his own damn self. Look how well that turned out. 

 

The morning after the Grand Prix banquet, Yuuri takes to the streets of Sochi alone, dragging his suitcase and nursing a pulsing headache. He regrets sneaking out of the hotel to avoid Celestino’s offer for lunch, his Russian too poor to order something that won't further upset his stomach. He regrets a lot.

So Yuuri walks. Puts one foot in front of the other. There’s a couple hours before he has to get on a flight back to Detroit. He focuses his attention on the slip of paper in his hand, with words in Cyrillic script meticulously copied onto hotel stationery. He'd shut his phone off last night when the social media mentions wouldn't stop, when the sight of Vicchan on his lockscreen kept splintering his heart.

Yuuri has to keep moving now, no matter what else. If he stops, it’ll swallow him.

A woman in the street corner looks unoccupied and approachable. Yuuri meekly taps on her shoulder and shows her his hotel paper. She points. Yuuri mutely nods his thanks and follows her direction to the Sochi City Library sitting squat and distinctive among the fancy high rises on either side of it. Beige and two floors tall, it seems too unassuming to house what he’s long been looking for. In his hands, he traces the Cyrillic letters for the hundredth time, hoping against hope that they were copied right, that the search engine he used hadn’t mislead him.

This had been his plan since the moment he learned the Grand Prix would be held in Sochi. He did his research twice, spent the days leading up to the competition promising himself in-between practices that win or lose, this would be how his season ended. In the Sochi City Library. Seeking. Hoping. Not allowing the terrible thing stalking him to tear him to pieces. Not until he had what he’d come looking for.

He shows his paper to the woman at the front desk and Yuuri is lead to a private windowless room where he sits on his hands and bounces his leg. After a few minutes, an old man comes in, muttering in Russian to a rusty metal tin of film in his hand. Yuuri stills.

The man sets a projector on the table and points it to the bare wall. He pops open the tin and, delicately, feeds the reel of film into the machine. The spool sets in place with a click. Subtly as he can, Yuuri turns his phone back on, hastily thumbing over to his camera and clearing all his notifications with two prompts. If the old man notices his intent to record, he says nothing. He simply walks over to shut the lights off before starting the film.

The quality is horrific. After a hundred years, the black and white nitrate film is spotty, and the flickering images stutter from partial decomposition. It’s barely enough to make out the white of the ice and snow, the vertical stripes of a winter forest, and the slender figure skating to his position in the middle of a frozen lake. Mesmerized, Yuuri leans closer.

In the silence, the figure raises his head in supplication, raises a hand to drape across his face. Victor Nikiforov begins to skate, and Yuuri cannot remember how to breathe.

 

The camera clatters loudly in his left ear when the film runs out, and it takes Yuuri a moment to return to where he is, to realize that the old man is asking him something in Russian. Lowering his phone, Yuuri fumbles out a quiet ‘nyet’. The film is swiftly removed from the machine and placed back in its protective tin. Then Yuuri is alone.

He powers his phone off and puts his head down, his hands trembling. Yuuri struggles to make them stop, to pin his focus on the trip to the airport with his baggage weight, his return by taxi to cold Detroit, and fending off Phichit’s concerns, and calling back his sister, and… and…

And when the first sob escapes through his clenched teeth, Yuuri lets the awful thing sink its claws into him at last.

* * *

After five years away, being back at the ice castle feels like the homecoming Yuuri desperately needs but doesn’t deserve. It feels like the epilogue of a stagnant skating career; it feels like giving up. He knows no one wants to see him skate anymore, especially not anyone in Hasetsu after how he'd embarrassed them in Sochi. Surely Yuuko has better things to do tonight.

But Yuuri has to show her this. This one last thing.

The moon shines on the ice of Hasetsu’s rink like a spotlight as Yuuri approaches, pulling off his skate guards at the boards and handing them to Yuuko, along with his glasses. Then he gives her his phone; he asks her to watch.

Yuuri takes his place on the ice and nods to his friend, who presses play on the video loaded up on the phone. Yuuko’s eyes widen, jumping up to Yuuri.

And just like the figure in the video, Yuuri waits four breaths, then languidly raises his head to the sky. He writes the music in his mind, equal parts heartbreaking and unyielding — just like the skater himself. Yuuri lifts a hand to draw over his face, to begin telling the story.

A Russian figure skater, bursting with talent and ripe with promise, emerges from the dark of anonymity to claim a piece of history. He is born to a young soldier and a ballerina in 1897, in the dead of winter one year before the very first World Figure Skating Championship will be held in St. Petersburg. Sixteen years later, he becomes the youngest person ever to win gold at a World Championship. He repeats the feat again in 1914, sweeping the competition with unparalleled grace and beating out men twice his age from all across Europe. In two years, his innovation has rewritten the book on European competitive ice skating. He is called the hero of Russia. Unstoppable, he is in a league of his own, alone at the top of the world.

Until the world collapses. Europe plunges into world war. The Russian figure skater takes up arms, fights for his country, and survives in only the strictest definition of the world. Steadfast, he returns to the ice with passion like a force of nature. In the following years, as Russia dissolves around him in civil war, he refuses to let life’s horror outweigh its beauty. He performs for the Tsar and his family. In secret, he performs for the poor and impoverished. He skates in every Russian competition that will have him. He waits.

He wins consecutive gold medals in the newly established Soviet Figure Skating Championships from 1920 until 1924. That year, the first ever winter Olympics are held in Haute-Savoie, France.

They will not let him skate.

For its involvement in the War, Russia is internationally banned from competing. Furious and desperate, the skater confronts the Olympic committee. He threatens them, bribes them, swallows his pride and pleads. But even then, he is refused. He is told that the world will never again welcome Russia on the ice.

A broken man, the figure skater returns to St. Petersburg. He tries to skate as if all is well, but rumors begin to spread. They say he begged like a dog for the chance to skate under another nation’s flag. They say he preferred the company of men. The public turns. In his own country, he is banned from the sport. Six months later, alone and abandoned by his purpose, he disappears to the back-alley whispers of conspiracy or suicide. No body is ever found. He was twenty-seven.

Disgraced, the figure skater is near-universally wiped from the Russian history books. From the top of the world, he is cast to the wolves of time.

But he is here now. In Yuuri’s step sequence, in the song in his heart. He is here as Yuuri skates the man’s only surviving routine in perfect synchronization. It is masterful and years ahead of its time, and in every languid pull of muscles like a bow over strings, it is a prayer into the night for any god who might be listening. _Stay close to me. Please. Do not leave me._

And a hundred years too late, Yuuri is calling back.

He finishes the routine, arms crossed over his clavicle, heaving up at the ceiling. Yuuri stares at the rafters of the ice castle — a mylar balloon tangled in a light — and wonders what Victor Nikiforov saw when he stared up at the sky.

When the adrenaline fades and Yuuri can hear past the thunder of blood in his ears, he notices Yuuko is struggling not to cry. She waves the phone at him.

“Yuuri! How—? How did you _find_ this? That was _beautiful!_ How did you even...there was no _music!”_

“I made it up,” he says with a small shrug. But that’s not completely accurate — for the last year, he’s skated to the orchestration of long limbs in a dark cloak over white ice. “I found an old reel in a library in Sochi.”

Yuuko clasps her hands together. “That was freaking _amazing,_ Yuuri. After the Grand Prix, I thought you would be depressed.”

Yuuri gives her a small smile, scissoring his skates idly. “I was. But...seeing Victor in Sochi…”

After a lifetime of snippets in history blogs and the same dozen black and white stilted photos from his younger days on podiums...watching Victor Nikiforov in motion had been Yuuri’s holy grail since he was twelve. Ever since he and Yuuko came across the name and a sepia photo in a skating history book. Victor at sixteen, minutes before winning his first Worlds gold, beautiful and elegant and skating with overwhelming flourish on the ice— his mouth tilted up in a heart-shaped smile so joyous, Yuuri never did manage to get it out of his head.

“I thought I’d lost my love for skating,” he tells Yuuko, “and I wanted it back. I thought if I could keep my promise to Victor, it would help me remember.”

“Did it?”

Yuuri looks down at his feet.

From the moment he learned how to pronounce the name, Yuuri vowed he would not let Victor Nikiforov remain forgotten. He named his poodle after him, and told anyone who asked the story of his favorite figure skater; he listed Victor as his skating idol in every interview, written or verbal; he ran a fairly popular fanpage and shared all his findings with other skating history sites. And now, he’d finally skated one of Victor’s choreographies, traced the man’s footsteps one for one.

Seeing the mourning, the longing in every fluid line of his body...

The vow rings hollow in Yuuri’s ears. Victor Nikiforov deserved someone far better than Katsuki Yuuri, international failure, to keep his memory alive.

“I don’t know, Yuuko.”

“Do you think there’s more video—” Yuuko starts, but is interrupted by her triplets appearing and accosting Yuuri. Figuratively and literally, they scramble over each other to compliment him, to squeal, to pepper him with questions. Yuuko quiets them and Takeshi arrives to welcome Yuuri back. Talk of Victor dissipates in more homecoming from his childhood rinkmates.

Once Takeshi has carted the girls off to bed, Yuuko hands Yuuri back his phone with a warm smile that chases color across Yuuri’s cheeks. “You should do that routine for next year’s competition. It would blow everyone away!”

“Oh. Right.” Yuuri plays with the hem of his shirt. Yuuko doesn't know he’s retiring. How could she, when he hasn't even told his family.

She bows her head. “Thank you for sharing it with me.”

Yuuri bows back, unable to resist a smile. “Well, you _are_ vice president of the Victor Nikiforov fanclub.”

After goodbyes, Yuuri heads back to the onsen through the dark streets of Hasetsu. As he drifts over to walk along the waterfront, he wonders what the future holds for him now. What was left after sabotaging his professional career and achieving his lifelong goal of seeing Victor skate?

Staring up at the moon, Yuuri can’t picture Victor ever finding the weight of the world unbearable. Victor always knew that he wanted to make history. He was willing to give up anything and everything just for another chance to skate. Who was Yuuri to a man like that? Yuuri crumpled under the slightest pressure, crushed by his own insecurity. One major loss and he was considering giving up the ice altogether. Victor was at odds with the entire world and _still_ he fought for the chance to skate. Until the very end, Yuuri has no doubt that Victor Nikiforov was fighting. He would never give up.

Yuuri picks up his pace with the murmuring dark of the black ocean on one side, the lights of Hasetsu blinking off for the night on his other. That's how he and Victor are different, he decides. Yuuri will never be as good. And he'll always fall apart in the end.

* * *

He finds out about the video the next day, about a minute after he wakes to the swarm of buzzing social media alert messages. In his ear, Yuuko shouts at her daughters about privacy and Takeshi shouts over them to apologize profusely.

To Yuuri’s horror, the video has a sizeable amount of views. The comments section is a hornet’s nest of wild speculation whether this routine will be Yuuri Katsuki’s secret-weapon for the upcoming season. His mailbox icon rattles with requests for interviews. An amicable facebook message from Celestino asks Yuuri to pass on his compliments to his new choreographer. There’s an extended string of overjoyed emojis from Phitchit waiting for him in his WhatsApp. Minako sends him seven texts demanding to know where the holy hell _this_ came from, why didn’t he skate with _this_ at the Grand Prix. It’s beautiful, it’s heartbreaking, it’s…

Yuuri shuts his phone off and plans to hide under his covers for the rest of the day. Maybe the rest of his life.

 

He wakes to his mother knocking on his door, telling him about the snow and gently requesting that he do something about it. A child of the service industry to the last, Yuuri rouses himself from lethargy and goes to shovel the walk. He stumbles into his snowshoes and almost knocks a framed photo of Victor off his desk.

It’s a real photo, unlike the computer printouts in varying pixelations taped to the wall behind his desk. He’d bought it off ebay when he was just starting in Juniors, and the shipping to Japan cost Yuuri more than the photo itself. Had Yuuri not been Victor Nikiforov’s biggest fan, he might not have recognized the photo’s value either. Most surviving photos of Victor Nikiforov were of his Worlds wins in ‘13 and ‘14. There were exactly three military-issue photos of his time in service, but by the time he returned to Russia for the revolution and the Sochi competitions, it was close enough to the government’s purge of his legacy that very, _very_ few photos survive of Victor as an older man.

Yuuri has never held back from sharing his love of Victor with the world, every scrap he’s ever found — except this one.

It’s the most beautiful thing he owns: one of the last photographs ever taken of Nikiforov. Victor is older, late-twenties. He sits in a high-back leather chair by a fire, a poodle curled up on the carpet in front of him. His skates rest at an angle by the fireplace. The man himself is reading a book, pinching a page between two fingers. All the elements of the photo revolve around the singular focus of Victor’s face, cast in white by the light of the fire from below and framed by a halo of wispy bangs. There is no shadow of the heart-shaped smile from his youth, his limbs arranged in the chair like a throne. He appears to be reading the book, his chin tilted just convincingly so, but Yuuri knows this photo better than his own reflection. He knows the look of a man figuring a way to claw his way back to the top of the world.

Once, the photo had been inspirational. Now, Yuuri sighs and tilts it forward to lay face-down on his desk.

An hour later, when the front walk is shovelled, Yuuri returns indoors — and stops dead in his tracks at the sight of a poodle panting happily in the entryway.

His heart seizes and the name wheezes out of him unbidden. “...Vicchan?”

The poodle whoofs and jumps him. It sends Yuuri sprawling. After a few insistent licks to his eyes and mouth, the shock passes, and Yuuri laughs in a strange heartbroken relief when he realizes the dog is too big to be his.

“Looks just like our Vicchan, huh?” his father says. “He came in with a handsome foreigner.”

Yuuri scratches the poodle’s ears. She whoofs again and nuzzles her head in Yuuri’s neck in an impromptu doggy hug. It’s oddly comforting.

“Yuuri, there you are,” Hiroko says cheerfully, coming into view with a tray full of steaming dishes. “A guest in the onsen was asking for you.”

Confused, Yuuri heads in the direction of the baths. As his mother’s lack of explanation resounds in his head, though, his anxiety starts to fill in the blanks. By the time he reaches the baths, Yuuri is very close to a panic, slipping on the tile and slamming his shoulder into the glass door before wrenching it open. But there’s no grouchy ISF judge or team of lawyers in the onsen waiting for him, ready to ban him for passing off another skater’s choreography as his own.

Only silver hair and sculpted white shoulders, ice-fleck blue eyes that glance up at Yuuri’s ruckus, and a dazzling, _impossible_ , smile.

The stranger stands, dripping and shameless, and holds out a hand. He says the most incredible things, like Yuuri’s _name_ and _I’m going to be your coach_ and _you’re going to win the Grand Prix Final._

And when Yuuri says nothing because he physically _cannot_ , the man in the onsen winks.

“My name is Victor Nikiforov. The fourth.”

* * *

Minako is summoned as soon as Yuuri manages to get his phone to his ear and produce sounds that resemble the Japanese language. She arrives thirty minutes later. Without looking her way, Yuuri whispers, “He’s here, right?”

Minako looks at him like he’s crazy which, frankly, Yuuri hasn’t completely ruled out. “The smoking hot, half-naked foreigner sleeping on your floor with a poodle?”

“You can see him too?”

As she sits down beside him, Minako holds a hand to Yuuri’s forehead. “You haven’t started drinking without me, have you?”

Minako’s voice sounds distant, coming from somewhere far _far_ away from Yuuri’s train of thought. He’s dreaming. He has to be. Yuuri knows every line of this face, knows the angle of that jaw and that curve of hairline. He's only been memorizing it half his life. Fascination pulls him in like the center of gravity and Yuuri doesn’t realize his hand is floating in the air in front of him, halfway to the sleeping Russian’s face, until Minako shakes his shoulder.

“Yuuri? Did you hear me?”

His hand snaps back to his body. “Sorry, what?”

“This feels like a scam,” Minako says with a tight lipped frown.

Yuuri blinks at her owlishly until she goes on. “The whole world knows you idolize Victor Nikiforov, and that you fired Celestino as your coach. Your stellar program for next season leaks online and suddenly a total stranger appears out of thin air claiming to be your idol’s progeny? Fabulous cheekbone genetics aside, it all sounds _way_ too convenient.”

Yuuri’s eyes drift back to Victor Nikiforov the Fourth, rolling over to better snuggle his dog. He smiles a little in his sleep and it takes Yuuri a minute longer to process Minako’s words. “It’s not my program.”

“What?”

Yuuri’s voice is so soft, he’s not completely sure it’s coming out of his mouth. “It’s not my program, Minako. It’s a Victor Nikiforov piece, from 1923. I found a reel of it in Sochi and I skated it.”

Minako rests back on her hands, her incredulity unwavering. “So you’re saying this guy recognized his great-grandfather’s long-lost skating program and was _so_ impressed he came to coach you?”

Yuuri nods. He’s still staring at Victor the Fourth, terrified to look away. As far-fetched as that sounds, it’s still leagues ahead of the ludicrous theory scratching at the door of Yuuri’s brain. It’s far more likely that intimate knowledge of complicated skating routines and heart-shaped smiles are genetic. Yeah. That must be it.

Shaking her head, Minako _tsks_. “Still sounds like a scam.”

Yuuri pokes Victor the Fourth just above his hipbone. He stays solid. Yuuri doesn’t wake up from whatever dream he's obviously trapped in, but Victor does giggle in his sleep and mumbles something flirty in Russian.

“It’s such a pretty scam, though.”

Minako looks Yuuri up and down, then at the sleeping foreigner. “Well damn,” she says. “Are you going to take his offer?”

Beyond the uncanny resemblance to a ninety years dead figure skater, Yuuri knows nothing about Victor’s mysterious great-grandson. He has no proof the man can even skate, let alone coach. Until an hour ago, he was unaware that Victor Nikiforov ever had children.

But something draws Yuuri to him. Something magnetic and essential like what always drags him back to the ice.

“Yeah,” he says breathlessly. “I think I am.”

His mother puts a tray of tea down on the table beside him with a knowing smile. “How nice. We’ll set his things up in the ballroom. Minako, are you hungry for dinner?”

The poodle whoofs at the world “dinner”. In an equally pavlovian response, Victor the Fourth rises, sitting up a straight ninety-degrees with supernatural core strength. He acknowledges the small crowd gathered beside him with a short yawn and a hungry look tossed over his bare shoulder. He blinks his powder-soft eyelashes. “Oh? Is everyone else eating?”

Yuuri supersedes Minako’s negatory with a very emphatic, “Yes! Yes, we’re just eating are you hungry? We’ve got lots of food!”

He perks up immediately, smiling with ivory teeth. “Marvelous! I’m _starving._ ”

* * *

As dinner progresses, Yuuri is _beyond_ thankful that he called Minako. She grills Victor the Fourth through his bowl of katsudon, asking him all the skeptical questions that Yuuri _should_ be asking — why had he come, how did he find Yuuri, how long has he been skating, what does he plan to do. Victor the Fourth answers Minako distractedly through cheekfuls of rice and emphatic _vkusnos_ to Yuuri’s mom. Yuuri answers when he’s told in explicit terms to lay of the katsudon, but otherwise remains mesmerized by the spitting image of his idol shoveling his mother’s cooking into his mouth.

After dinner, Yuuri dutifully helps move Victor’s boxes into the ballroom. Collapsing to his knees, Yuuri peeks into the weighty box he’s lugged across the hot springs. There’s an entire marble bust inside. It looks grey in comparison to the near-translucent skin of the man in front of him.

Victor the Fourth is talking again, about coaching fees and sleeping arrangements, and moving about the room of boxes like a museum curator. He catches Yuuri staring.

“Sorry, sorry!” Yuuri fixes his glasses as an excuse to look away. “What was that again?”

Cocking a hip, Victor looks down at Yuuri. “Your friend was asking all the questions over dinner. Isn’t there anything _you_ want to know about me?”

“Oh, I already know everything about you,” Yuuri confesses. “ _I mean about Victor!_ I know everything about your great-grandfather, the...the original Victor Nikiforov.”

Victor the Fourth beams. Yuuri wills the onsen to overflow and drown him.

With a caution reserved for skittish pets, Victor gets down on his knees before Yuuri and leans in close. _So_ close. Yuuri can smell the post-dinner mint on his breath.

“My great-grandfather and I are very much alike,” he says as his hand slides up Yuuri’s arm, tracing the pulse in his wrist, his elbow, his inner shoulder. His eyes are lidded, the hungry glint undulled after two bowls of katsudon. “You’ll find he and I have very similar tastes _._ ”

Yuuri flushes hot from his ears to his toes. His mouth goes dry.

“But tell me more about you,” Victor coos, the hand trailing butterfly-soft over the pulse in Yuuri’s throat to rest on his cheek. “What kind of music do you enjoy? Do you have a lover? What’s your favorite color?”

The only color Yuuri can see is blue, the blue of Victor’s eyes, like the ice of an outdoor rink on the best day of your life. Yuuri tries to breathe, to find language, but the _smell_ of Victor fills his head like scented candles under a bell jar. It’s impossible to focus on anything but those blue eyes. Good god, how long had Yuuri dreamt of seeing them in color…

Yuuri jolts. He scrambles back, away, as fast as he can, until his back is pressed to the wall of the hallway, Victor a full room’s length away from him. The air clears. His vision refocuses on Victor, sitting back on his heels. Confused.

“Yuuri? You’re running away?”

Yuuri shakes his head frantically.

Victor checks his breath, petulant. “I didn’t think I was _so_ out of practice.”

“I...I’m going to be in bed if you need anything,” Yuuri says shrilly, then trips over his own feet to put any barrier between them.

In the safety of his room, Yuuri leans against his door, heaving breaths. Then he snatches the photo of Victor off his desk, stares at it, not sure what he’s looking for. Yuuri pulls out one of his Victor binders — collections of articles and memorabilia that would make his desk far too cluttered — and flips through to a print-out of a military-issued photo. It’s straight-on to the camera and the clearest image in existence of Victor. Clear enough that, even in sepia tones, his eyes are light enough to register as blue on film.

The boy in the photo and the man in the room next to Yuuri have maybe ten years between them. They also have the same eyes, set and determined, under the same brow. Yuuri traces the features with his fingertips.

 _Genetics_ , the sane part of his mind whispers. Russians have strong genes. Everyone knows that.

It takes Yuuri a long time to fall asleep. He can hear Victor walking around in the room next door, murmuring to himself in Russian. Despite locking his door and shutting his curtains and bundling under blankets — Yuuri can’t shake the lingering instinct to run.

* * *

Victor the Fourth sets up the strangest training regiment Yuuri has ever had.

It starts with a strict diet: no skating until he’s lost his extra weight. So while Victor rides a bike, his poodle at his side, Yuuri jogs around the town in the evening as soon as the sun has set, and again in the hours of the morning before sunrise. In the dark night in between, Victor has Yuuri training under the stars, where it’s cooler and quieter. Excellent for Yuuri’s stress levels. Or so Victor says. Yuuri’s body protests, even as Victor the Fourth explains all the scientific reasons it’s been proven exercising at night is better anyway.

In the afternoons and early evenings, Yuuri takes naps to compensate. It doesn’t stop him from falling asleep in Minako’s studio while still holding the ballet bar. After that, Minako grudgingly suggests that if Victor the Fourth insists on being a vampire, Yuuri might as well do the same.

He starts sleeping noon to sundown, which doesn’t leave him much daylight to interact with other people, but it’s enough to help out around the onsen in the mornings and dedicate his remaining free time to his research. Yuuri pores over his binders and history books, every translated Russian article, every skating forum post — searching for the missing hint of an ongoing Nikiforov family tree. Yuuri isn’t sure what he’s dreading more: finding out he overlooked vital information or there _being_ no information. Meaning Minako was right.

Except Minako _couldn’t_ be right.

Victor the Fourth skates all he wants, skates enough for both of them really. Yuuri has no idea what he promises the Nishigoris to keep the rink open overnight, but whatever it is works. And every time he takes to the ice, Yuuri has to manually force his eyes to blink, his lungs to take in air. Even as he fights his unmistakable fight-or-flight instinct. Every time.

Yuuri’s watched the Sochi video hundreds of times over the last year to perfect his performance, perhaps even thousands of times. He can’t fathom how many more times Victor the Fourth must have seen it to replicate it _even more flawlessly than Yuuri._

 

As the week wears on, Yuuri does everything he can to shake the stalking feeling breathing down his neck. Thinking his anxiety is manifesting as paranoia, Yuuri increased his dosage of medication and doubles down on his mother’s calming teas. He ups the difficulty of his training regiment beyond Victor’s requirements to burn off more energy.

The feeling doesn’t go away. Whenever Victor the Fourth is around, Yuuri feels like velvet stroked in the wrong direction.

Victor is around _a lot._

The moment Yuuri stops to take a breath, Victor pounces on him like an overstimulated puppy. Not as intensely as that first night, but overwhelming all the same. Probing questions about his life, his passions, his past relationships; calls to share a bed or go skinny dipping in the midnight ocean. Yuuri has never run faster than to escape Victor’s casual inquiries into his sexual history as he bikes beside Yuuri to the ice rink.

Most of the time, Yuuri is spry enough to change the topic and divert Victor’s scattered attention to whatever shiny thing is nearby. Yuuri is committed enough to focus on getting back to his weight at Sochi and nothing else — not his evolving indecision over his ice skating career; not the complications Victor the Fourth has introduced.

Nope. Not at all.

* * *

It’s three in the morning in the training rooms of Ice Castle Hasetsu. Yuuri’s on the incline bench, feet hooked into the rungs at the end as he curls up again and again. Victor is leaning against the end of the machine, helpfully keeping count of Yuuri’s sets. Yuuri certainly isn’t staring at Victor’s hair whorl and definitely isn’t calculating the possible generation gaps in the Nikiforov family tree again.

“Can I ask you something?”

The request strikes Yuuri as strange. It’s been a week of non-stop questions since Victor the Fourth’s arrival. “Uh, sure.”

“Why Victor Nikiforov?”

Yuuri’s tempo falters. He makes an undignified “?!” sound.

“In an interview, you said that you became fascinated as a child, right around the time you decided you wanted to make figure skating your career. But I’m curious as to what, in particular, drew your attention.”

Yuuri stops, laying out flat across the bench and panting. “Are you...serious?”

There exists a professional photo of Victor Nikiforov at sixteen, standing beside his intimidating coach and the Tsar’s royal family, visibly biting down on a grin for the camera. Victor the Fourth is giving Yuuri that exact same look now. “Am I never _not_ serious?”

Thinking back on Victor’s offers of couch snuggling and hand-feeding him katsudon, Yuuri wisely decides not to answer. Instead, Yuuri props himself up on his elbows to even out and better look at Victor. He worries his lip. “If I tell you, you have to tell me something in return. Okay?”

Victor’s heart-shaped smile still sends Yuuri reeling with its familiarity. “Yes! Yes, deal.”

Yuuri lets his upper body sag, chin dipping into his chest. He stares at the row of lockers in the corner of the room instead of those mesmerizing blue eyes.

“I was...drawn to his story,” Yuuri admits. “Victor was so driven. And talented. He accomplished so much at such a young age, he could have had one of the best skating careers in history. A hundred years later, he’s still the youngest person to win gold at a Worlds championship. Did you know he landed a quad loop fifty years before anyone else ever _tried_?”

Victor the Fourth’s lips quirk up. “I did not.”

Yuuri’s smile fades. “He fought so hard to make history and in the end...he was just...gone. All his accomplishments— swept under the rug because he did what he thought was the right thing. It wasn’t fair.” Laying back fully, Yuuri lets the blood flow to his head. He folds his hand over his stomach and stares, upside-down, at the opposite end of the room. “I used to daydream about what the world would be like if Victor Nikiforov had been allowed to skate. He would’ve medalled at the Olympics for sure, more than once. He probably would’ve retired a decorated athlete and coached future generations of Russian figure skating. I dunno. That loss of potential always haunted me. I never had much potential myself and, well, everyone loves a tragedy.”

“Not me.”

Yuuri picks his head up. “No?”

“I hate tragedies,” Victor says. His tone is earnest. “I much rather prefer love stories. The kinds in fairy tales where a handsome prince sweeps a beautiful woman off her feet and they live happily ever after.” He props his chin over the highest rung and gazes down at Yuuri. “What’s your favorite fairy tale?”

“Oh, geez, I… um, I don’t think I have one ready to go.”

“Mine is the Frog Princess. Do you know it?”

Yuuri shifts his legs a little. “I think so? Beautiful princess owes a favor to a frog, kisses him, and he turns out to be a prince. They marry and live happily ever after. Right?”

Victor the Fourth winks. “Close, but you’re thinking of the Frog _Prince_ . In the Frog _Princess,_ Prince Ivan finds a frog where he is told his bride should be. Though initially repulsed, it turns out the frog is actually Vasilisa the Wise— a beautiful, intelligent, and skilled princess who transforms back into a woman at night. Ivan falls in love. But in his haste to break the curse, he loses his beloved. He searches the world for her and eventually must implore Baba Yaga for help, who gives him a series of tasks to complete in order to be reunited with his princess.”

“Huh. I guess a kiss on the lips would’ve been too easy.”

“Ah, but where’s the fun in _easy?”_ Victor answers, and his enthusiasm doubles. He comes around the bench to stand at Yuuri’s side, hands on his hips. “Now, I believe you had a question for me. Ask away! I’m an open book!”

Yuuri unhooks his feet and sits up, all pretense of exercise forgotten. “Alright... Well… Why Katsuki Yuuri?”

There’s a twinkle in Victor’s eyes as he answers — an eagerness swimming, dizzyingly, just under the surface. “Because I saw him skate and knew he understood Victor Nikiforov.”

A blush creeps hot and fast across Yuuri’s cheeks. “That’s not… I didn’t…”

The smile adorning Victor’s face is different now, warm and teasing. Something Yuuri imagines has never been photographed. “I think he’d be very proud of you.”

Yuuri bleats out a laugh — then slaps a hand over his own mouth.

“You know, you’re going to have to learn how to take a compliment by the time you get to the Grand Prix Final,” Victor says, grinning. Yuuri blushes harder. “Sit up straight. Let’s practice. Someone says, ‘Yuuri, you are such an incredible skater, you most certainly deserved that gold medal!’ And you say…?”

“...I disagree?”

Yuuri braces for the canned coach speech of _who will believe in you if you don’t._ But Victor looks thoughtful. He steps back to give Yuuri room to stand.

“Don’t worry, little piggie,” he says, tapping Yuuri on the nose. “There’s time yet to turn you into a prince.”

On his bike, Victor starts off ahead to make it back to the onsen before the sun rises and Macachin makes a mess of his room. As the first light of morning spills over the water like paint, Yuuri jogs home at his own pace, lost in thoughts. They’re all fever dreams, of course — actually winning the GPF; Victor the Fourth being a real coach; not disappointing everyone he cares about.

Still. Yuuri wants to believe in something so badly, he’ll take anything at this point. Even if it’s the preposterous sentiment of his idol’s imaginary approval. Even if it’s Victor the Fourth’s smile.

* * *

The next night, Victor the Fourth buys himself the latest and fanciest smartphone model, and Yuuri offers to help him set it up when Victor is too busy swearing at the contraption in Russian to ask. Yuuri ends up spending the night on Victor’s floor instead of ice skating, surprised only at how unsurprising it is that Victor the Fourth doesn’t have a technologically adept bone in his body.

Yuuri sets up a new email for him after Victor forgets the password to his old one and talks Victor through apps and basic functions. Victor watches excitedly from over Yuuri’s shoulder, pointing and questioning and adorably puzzled. He gets Yuuri to laugh by calling him “Cell Phone Senpai” and Yuuri is privately relieved to contribute anything at all to their very one-sided relationship.

As the Yuuri-certified tutorial continues, Victor leans forward to see the too-small text of some Terms of Service agreement he insists on reading through. He braces a hand on Yuuri’s lower back to steady himself. Through Yuuri’s shirt, the touch is ice cold.

Abruptly, the smell of Victor grows heady in the small room, his breath a ghostly sensation against Yuuri’s cheek as he turns to mutter a frustration into the space between them.

Yuuri’s impulses flux wildly in both directions. He wants to turn his head into Victor’s neck and lap that intoxicating smell straight off his skin; he also wants to throw himself out the window in an attempt to bolt from the room as fast as humanly possible.

He winds up doing neither, swallowing hard and answering Victor’s question about the camera feature with only a stammer. Yuuri passes Victor the phone. The hand leaves. Victor smiles in a heart.

 

Afterwards, Yuuri sits in bed, the sounds of the bustling morning onsen a comfort as he stares at a dozen open books and binders spread out over his sheets. Victor Nikiforov’s — Victor the _Fourth’s —_  face stares up at Yuuri from every page.

He’s gone crazy.

Yuuri admits it at last. His nervous breakdown after Sochi has since escalated into a complete psychotic break manifesting as the weeklong hallucination of Victor Nikiforov coming back from the dead to coach him. He’s certifiable. Dr. Internet Wikipedia M.D. agrees.

Yuuri sets aside some books and falls back into bed. He takes the fireside photo in his hands, then holds it to his chest.

Well...

If he really _is_ having a complete break from reality, at least he’s getting back in shape and skating again. At least it’s Victor his mind has provided, the one impossible thing he’s wanted more than anything. It could be far, far worse, he decides. As long as he’s lucid, he’s going to make the most of it.

With the facts laid bare, Yuuri wonders why his heart's still pounding. He’d thought it was the paranoia, maybe the stress. But it comes to him all at once that he’s...oh God, he’s _happy_ about this.

He turns his face into his pillow to smother a smile. He’s completely lost his mind.

* * *

On his first day allowed to skate, Yuuri is nervous enough that he almost throws up when he wakes at sunset — but also undeniably excited. Victor is playing around with his new phone when Yuuri knocks on his door and tells Yuuri to go on ahead of him. Grabbing his skates, Yuuri waves goodbye to his parents and heads out to the rink.

He jogs over at a steady pace, feeling the anxiety climb with every block closer to the ice castle. He’s giddy about skating with Victor, about seeing those practice routines he’s been tempting Yuuri with over the last week up close. He’s also _terrified_ to skate under Victor because he has _no clue_ what to expect. Would it be unfair to want Victor the Fourth to be just like his great-grandfather? To _be_ his great-grandfather? If he was anything less than what Yuuri’s imagination had conjured over twelve years, Yuuri’s expectations were going to break his own heart and send his figure skating future back into magnificent free fall.

With that pleasant possibility, Yuuri tries to focus on the positive aspects of having a personal coach for the first time. It helps a little, but does nothing to settle the hairs on the back of his neck.

Yuuri comes to a stop at a street corner as the light pauses on red. Feeling someone’s eyes on him, he foolishly looks around for Victor. But the streets are sparsely populated with locals, and not a one of them is tall and silver-haired and very clearly foreign. Stretching his thigh, Yuuri warily turns back towards the ice castle to wait for the light to change. The sensation lingers the rest of his jog, exacerbated by the settling night and the all but abandoned streets around the rink.

When Yuuri arrives, he finds the front door of the rink locked. No amount of knocking or jostling will open it, and a quick pat-down of his joggers reveals he left his keys at the onsen. Short of breath, he fishes out his cell phone to call Yuuko, but freezes with his thumb over her face when the streetlight behind him abruptly cuts out _._

It’s the cocktail of nerves, he tells himself. Or it’s that police drama Mari was watching last night. He’s paranoid. He’s never heard of anyone being murdered in Hasetsu...

Behind Yuuri, something growls.

The phone fumbles out of his hand. Yuuri stumbles then sprints, full speed, for the utility entrance. The labored pace of something large, fast, and distinctly unfriendly follows.

Yuuri yanks uselessly at a second locked door and doesn’t have a moment to wonder where the Nishigoris are when that thing he certainly isn’t imagining _roars_ and pounces.

The scream sticks in his throat. Yuuri drops into a ball, covering his face. He recalls his one unfortunate experience with a German Shepherd in Detroit and stupidly plays dead, stupidly praying not to _actually_ die.

He hears a blow land, but doesn’t feel it. A strangled whine cuts through the air, and it takes Yuuri far too long to realize it didn’t come from his own throat. Then there are hands on him. Cold hands.

“Are you alright?!”

Yuuri nods and shakes his head at the same time. He doesn’t dare move from his defensive ball. He’s not sure he can even if he wanted to.

“Yuuri, look at me. Look at me, are you alright?”

Like punching underwater, Yuuri pulls his face from his arms to look up at Victor. Victor whose eyes are crimson. Victor whose teeth are fangs.

Over a dozen yards away, Yuuri’s pursuer roars its fury from the dark.

Victor looks over his shoulder briefly, then straight into Yuuri’s soul. “ _Stay here._ ”

Yuuri gives a quick nod. It sounds like the sanest thing in the world. Then Victor is gone so fast, Yuuri’s eye can’t catch it.

There are sounds of struggle, beyond the line of Yuuri’s sight. Snarling and yowling and grunting. Yuuri stays paralyzed on the ground, unable to make his body do anything beyond what Victor has asked it to do.

The fight doesn’t last a full minute. Then Victor is strolling back towards the Ice Castle.

...carrying a full-sized, thrashing, white Siberian tiger over one shoulder.

“Uh-oh,” Victor is saying cheerily. “That’s not a happy kitty.”

Before Yuuri’s eyes, the beast twice Victor’s size transforms into a hissing and spitting blonde teenager. “Put me down before I kick your ass!!”

* * *

Somehow, Yuuri makes it the rest of the way to the Ice Castle. Somehow, he finds himself sitting on a bench overlooking the rink as Victor and the naggingly familiar blonde boy converse in rapid-fire Russian: the language furious on the kid’s tongue, patient on Victor’s. Somehow, a cup of hot tea ends up in Yuuri’s hand and a blanket is draped across his shoulder. Yuuri’s ears are ringing. His hands are shaking around the cup of tea. Everything feels secondhand and Yuuri can’t remember what he’d come to the rink to do, what he was doing here in the middle of the night.

Words in English finally pierce through his haze. “You _promised_ ,” the teenager is accusing. “How could you not remember?!”

Victor sighs. “I’m a hundred and nineteen years old, Yuri. I can’t be expected to remember everything I’ve promised anyone.”

“That’s bullshit! It was barely thirty years ago,” Yuri growls, _actually_ growls.

Victor’s tone is amused. “Aren’t you a little young to be in need of a revenge killing?”

“I can kill my own enemies, idiot. I want something better. Something only you can provide.” He rolls his eyes. “You’re clearly out of whatever dumb retirement you were in, so we’re going back to Russia. You’re going to coach my figure skating comeback.”

The words trigger sound to come out of Yuuri’s cotton-filled mouth. “Victor’s my coach.”

The two Russians turn to him. Yuri’s eyes are diamond sharp; the red is draining out of Victor’s like blood down a sink.

“He’s my coach,” Yuuri hears someone say in his voice. “He came to coach me.”

Yuri whirls back to Victor. “Are you fucking serious?”

“Yuri Plisetsky, you remember Yuuri Katsuki,” Victor says. An impish smile betrays him. “Mr. Katsuki is my biggest fan.”

The blonde glares at his namesake. Yuuri, with all his fragile mental faculties, waves.

“I know who the chewy idiot is,” Yuri says, turning back to Victor. His next questions is cautious. “Is he yours?”

“No.”

“Then why are you wasting your time with him?!”

“Perhaps,” Victor says, a challenge lilting in his voice, “you should worry less about why I’m wasting my time with him, and why I should waste my time with _you_.”

Yuri blinks at him, stunned. Then, with a snarl, he snatches his skates out of a backpack, muttering angrily about _I’ll show you_ and _stupid old man._ When he takes to the ice, he makes Victor swear to watch him. Victor promises he will, if Yuri shows him something worth watching.

It takes Yuuri’s brain an embarrassingly long while to catch up. “He was… He was trying to kill me.”

Victor touches a finger to his lips. “His heart wasn’t in it.”

Yuuri could’ve been fooled. He looks out at the blonde slicing through the waxing moon's reflection on the mirror clear ice. All powerful shoulders and lethal claws folded up into a willowy teenage frame; every inch the proverbial tiger in sheep’s clothing. Except the eyes. Yuuri flinches when the other boy catches him staring. Yuri Plisetsky has the eyes of a predator.

“He’s decent, don’t you think?”

Yuuri blinks. “What?”

“Skating,” Victor says casually. “Not a lot of refinement, but the raw talent is there. There’s quite a lot of it for someone his age.”

Something impossible about a 30-year-old promise echoes in Yuuri’s head. “How...old is he?”

“Fifteen.”

Yuuri debates, then mumbles, “...how long has he been fifteen?”

Victor merely hums. “His kind age slowly.” The Russian Yuri sets up and executes a flawless quad salchow. Victor sighs. “His confidence is strong, but then again, born werebeasts have a habit of taking their abilities for granted.” He says it with the same clinical tone he’s been using all week to tell Yuuri he’s going to make it to the GPF _and_ he’s going to win it.

Yuri Plisetsky does a little showing off with a series of combination jumps, but Yuuri is only half watching.

"Can...someone be born like you?"

The moment it's out of his mouth, Yuuri feels the air turn electric, charged with ozone before a lightning strike. Then the moment of tension fractures apart when Victor smiles, teasing and with teeth. Yuuri catches the pearl gleam of a venomous incisor in the light of the moon.

"No. All vampires are made.”

Victor is unreasonably patient as Yuuri roots around for his courage. “Oh. That’s… That’s good.”

Neither of them says anything as one Yuri skates and the other lets his tea go cold.

* * *

Yuuri holds in the panic attack valiantly. Holds it with two white-knuckled hands all the way from the ice rink back to the onsen, through breakfast and a bath, through _Yurio’s_ introduction to his family, through Victor’s laughter and Victor’s appetite and Victor’s infectious charm. Yuuri plays it cool. He forces a nervous smile when Yurio announces he’s staying with his family; he doesn’t let his heart sink when Yurio and Victor get on with a prickly camaraderie older than he is.

It’s only when Mari asks for help and gives him an excuse to leave the room that all the inescapable things lance through Yuuri at once. He finds his feet taking him right back to the ice rink like a siren to the sea.

The Russian Yuri has more confidence than he’ll ever have, Yuuri thinks. _He’s_ the one with all the potential. He doesn’t turn into a walking disaster whenever Victor opens his mouth. How is Yuuri supposed to measure up against someone like that? Why on earth would Victor want Yuuri, inconsistent and weak, when he had someone like Yurio to—

Oh God. He’s really _Victor Nikiforov_.

He’s really here. He’s really eating and sleeping and living in his parents’ onsen. One-hundred-year-old Victor Nikiforov had revealed his true self to Yuuri as casually as changing clothes and somehow expected Yuuri to accept this without question. Yuuri lives in a world with supernatural creatures. Teenage tigers and immortal idols. He’s not crazy, he’s _insane_.

Yuuri acknowledges Takeshi opening up for the day and takes to the ice, skating tight figure eights to keep himself moving, to escape the realization chasing him in circles — that Victor fucking Nikiforov crawled out of the pages of history after a century to coach _him_. Why?

What had Victor seen in him? What made him want to stay? What made him so sure that Yuuri wouldn’t go running for the hills at the truth? How could Victor be so confident? Yuuri couldn’t trust someone blindly like that.

Except he had.

Except he _did_ trust Victor. Victor Nikiforov, who conquered the skating world with brilliance unparalleled. Who was a hundred and twenty years old and slept cuddling with his poodle like she was a stuffed animal. Who wanted to know everything about Yuuri Katsuki and his little hometown.

Yuuri starts to practice a routine, the first routine that comes to mind. His mind can’t fathom that the lifetime of potential he never in a million years thought he’d ever come close to tapping into — no matter how many books and articles he read on Victor Nikiforov — was all in front of him now, ready and willing to take Yuuri the distance.

But if he _could_ fathom it… If the impossible really was in season…

Yuuri does a quad toe loop as easy as taking a leap of faith.

...then maybe he _could_ win the Grand Prix Final.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow. So I've had this sitting on my computer for the better part of a year now. I meant for it to be a 5-Chapter novelette or something to that tune, but I never managed to figure out the right tone for chapters 3-5. But I had 16,000 perfectly good words sitting on my computer and I have always been awfully proud of this first chapter, so I'm posting it as a one-shot. If people like it and, if I can carve out the time to do this story justice, I may continue. I hope you all enjoyed.
> 
> The title is taken from my mishearing the lyrics of the song "Harbour Lights" by A Silent Film: "You and I know I can't come home, but the water rose faster than I could run, and all my love has bruised my grieving bones. Forgive my sins, for I haven't found god, and I don't know when I can trust my heart, but you were my rock, never my stepping stone."


End file.
